Tight budgets could complicate Sessions' vow to fight crime

Attorney General Jeff Sessions promises to help cities fight crime, and those cities know exactly what they want to accomplish the task.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is promising his Justice Department will lead the charge in helping cities fight violent crime, and police chiefs are ready with their wish-lists.

More technology to trace guns after shootings. More grant money. More intelligence analysts to help dismantle gangs. More protective gear and equipment. As the head of one police officers' union put it, "We need more of everything."

But Sessions, who cut his teeth as a federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, at the height of the drug war in the 1980s, has inherited a federal government that built itself to fight terrorism since 9/11 and, more recently, to combat cybercrime.

Since taking office, Sessions has spoken repeatedly about a spike in murders. He and President Donald Trump ordered the creation of a crime-fighting task force, bringing together the heads of the major law enforcement agencies. And they seem to be counting on tighter border security to stop a flow of drugs and reduce crime.

But they have yet to offer new money for crime-fighting, especially in the face of Trump's plan to slash nonmilitary budgets. More clarity could come Thursday when the administration unveils its budget proposal. Sessions also has not said how federal law enforcement will be able to juggle priorities.

"He'll find out very quickly that you can't pull people off all these other things just to go do that," said Robert Anderson, who was the FBI's most senior criminal investigator until his retirement in 2015. Anderson joined the bureau in the 1990s, when combating violence and drugs was its top challenge. "Now he's walking into a much different Justice Department and FBI."

Kerry Sleeper, assistant director of the FBI office that works with local law enforcement, said that after decades of declines in violence, police chiefs are coming to grips with a new uptick and asking for federal help.

What they'd like to see:

— In Milwaukee, Police Chief Edward Flynn said he would like an expansion of the work done in that city by the Justice Department's Violence Reduction Network. It teams officers with deputy U.S. marshals and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Drug Enforcement Administration to target high-crime areas. "It's encouraging to have an incoming administration take an interest in the spikes in violence in central cities," he told The Associated Press.

— In Baltimore, which recorded 318 homicides last year, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has said he would like federal agencies to double the number of agents assigned to cities experiencing spikes in violence.

— In Chicago, singled out by the White House for its surge in shootings, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has said he would welcome more agents and money for mentorship and after-school programs to help kids in violent neighborhoods and, in turn, reduce crime.

Other cities want help processing evidence, tracing guns and prosecuting drug traffickers and dealers as they combat heroin and opioid addiction.

More chiefs are asking the FBI for its help with intelligence-gathering to thwart crime, said Stephen Richardson, assistant director for the FBI's criminal division.

Richardson, who formed the first FBI task force in the Western District of Louisiana to combat violent criminals, said the new focus will mean shifting resources in ways that are yet to be seen. The FBI is finalizing a strategy to "surge" resources, including agents, in certain cities this summer.

"We won't be able to do all the cities we'd like to at once," Richardson said. "I firmly believe it will make a difference."

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